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Bad News Europe According to Missing Migrants, a documentation project by the UN-run International Organisation for Migration, 19,705 people have gone missing in the central Mediterranean since 2014. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Separated Families and Missing Persons Centre registered 16,500 people who were looking for 25,600 missing migrants across Europe in 2021 alone. …
Continue reading European and World News Updates – September 2022
Good News Britain The Bike Project, set up in 2013, refurbishes second-hand bikes and provides them to refugees and asylum seekers in London and Birmingham. Twenty Ukrainian medical students whose training was thrown into turmoil by the Russian invasion are starting clinical placements around Cambridge. Ahead of the court hearing this month scheduled to decide…
Continue reading Good & Bad News in Britain – September 2022 Update
Indonesia’s easternmost island of Papua is home to more than 250 different Indigenous linguistic groups. Wabu Block, in the Intan Jaya regency, belongs mostly to the Moni tribe who have inhabited the land for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples there have suffered endless oppression and human rights abuses at the hands of Indonesian authorities despite the fact…
Continue reading Protecting Indigenous Groups in Papua
Since 1999, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been home to the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission (known as Monusco). Its role is to protect civilians, but personnel have been accused of sexual violence against women and girls, including impregnating girls as young as 10. Potentially thousands of ‘peace or peacekeeping babies’ have been…
Continue reading UN Peacekeepers’ Abuse and Exploitation of Women and Girls
The Israeli Ministry of Defence announced a new procedure, effective from July, comprising a 97-page document to replace the previous four-page document. The procedure governs all entry by foreigners to the West Bank (excluding ‘mixed visits’ where visitors travel to both the West Bank and Israel) and sets criteria on the entry and stay of…
Continue reading Israel’s Restrictions on Foreigners Visiting the West Bank
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of immunity to Israel for crimes perpetrated in Gaza. The ruling is in response to an appeal that Israel pay compensation for the paralysis caused to Attiya Nabaheen, who had just turned 15 when he was shot by Israeli forces in his family’s front yard in Gaza in…
Continue reading Israel’s Immunity from Crimes Committed by the Military in Gaza
Some of you may have signed the petition asking the government to review its foreign policy towards Israel, given the reports of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the UN Special Rapporteur. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office responded that it was aware of these reports but did not agree with the terminology they used. It…
Continue reading Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Response to Amnesty’s Report on Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified a total of 5,587 civilian deaths during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as of 14 August, but says real numbers are likely to be much higher. The UN reports at least 12 million people have fled their homes. Nearly 9,000 Ukrainian military have…
Continue reading Update on Ukraine and Ukrainian Refugees
Between April and July, researchers from Amnesty’s IS spent several weeks investigating Russian strikes in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions. They inspected strike sites, interviewed survivors, witnesses and relatives of victims and carried out weapons analysis. The subsequent press release, which can be read here https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrainian-fighting-tactics-endanger-civilians, has proved highly controversial. The researchers stated that…
Continue reading Controversial Press Release on Ukraine from Amnesty’s International Secretariat (IS)
A panel (c.30 minutes) on Women’s Hour on 15 August with three Afghan women, one still in Kabul, discussed their lives now and the lives of women generally in Afghanistan. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb